Community Science Team (CST)

This page describes the Rubin Community Science team (CST).

About the Rubin CST

The CST is responsible for supporting the community in their use of the Rubin data products and services.

Within Rubin Observatory the CST is part of the System Performance department. All CST members are Rubin staff.

The System Performance department is responsible for ensuring that the LSST is on-track to achieve its 10-year science goals. It includes three other teams: Survey Scheduling, Verification and Validation, and Systems Engineering. The CST is part of System Performance because the scientific results produced by the community are a key success metric of the Rubin System.

Rubin's Model for Community Science.

The Rubin Observatory's model for community science is currently being developed and implemented by the CST. An early version is available in the Rubin Tech Note RTN-006.

The model's three main components are:

1. Facilitate the scientific analysis of LSST data by providing documentation, tutorials, and workshops that are accessible and inclusive.
2. Coordinate expertise to resolve issues with deep dives into scientific applications and responsive and transparent communications.
3. Sustain a global self-supporting science community via online forums for peer-to-peer Q&A, networking, and collaboration.

Who is "the Community"?

The Rubin community is a broad term that refers to anyone, anywhere, interacting with the Rubin Observatory data products and services, in any capacity. It is a union set of all of the following communities.

The science community refers specifically to the subset of the Rubin community doing scientific analyses with the LSST data products and services. It includes astronomers, scientists, and students, worldwide.

Science Collaboration members are science community members who have joined one of the LSST Science Collaborations.

Rubin Observatory staff are individuals who work for Rubin Observatory as part of the construction or operations teams. All staff are members of the Rubin community and are data rights holders. Any staff engaging in scientific analyses are part of the science community, and many staff are also Science Collaborations members.

Data rights holders are individuals with the right to access, analyze, and publish work based on the Rubin Observatory proprietary data products and services (such as the Rubin Science Platform) as described in the Rubin Data Policy document, RDO-013.